Find your Pony to Blow Past your Goals!

I was asked to present a few points to our sales team recently. Here is what I shared below. Hope you find some tips you can apply and use to immediately drive results.

Find your Pony to Blow Past your Goals!

Pretty Awesome Pony!

Two little twin girls, named Pessimist & Optimist where having a birthday soon. Pessimist told her mom and dad that she wanted a new bicycle. Not just any would do! A red bicycle with pink tassels and a sweet banana seat was what was in demand.

The birthday arrived and every friend was in attendance. Little Ms. Pessimist was given her new bike; however it wasn’t as she demanded. This new bike wasn’t red but in fact was orange; the tassels were not pink but were green. “This is the worst birthday ever!” she lamented.

Cute little Ms. Optimist was presented with a large box manure. Her eyes filled with excitement as she began to grab this manure by the handful throwing it in the air. Handful after handful digging in anticipation, she finally looked up at mom and dad and exclaimed:

“With this much manure there has got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

You may feel like your digging through your own manure right now; customers not calling back, manufacturing issues, competing priorities, stress, etc. There can be a Pony in most situations. You just have to keep digging.

How can you find excitement in the day to day?

Take stock in what you DO have. It’s easy to take things for granted when you live in the sales trenches daily.

Challenge yourself to expand into new areas. Writing is a new area for me that has challenged me beyond belief, but has proven to be extremely rewarding. What areas can you expand into in your professional life?

Think short term to build momentum for the long term. I read a great quote earlier this month by Tom Peter that said “Excellence is not an aspiration; Excellence is the next 5 minutes.” Go do big things.. 5 minutes at a time!

Be objective about your business!

In the minutia of day to day it’s easy to let your emotions hang and carry from activity to activity. One bump in the road and you start saying “I told you so” to yourself. Driving your business solely on emotions can lead to cynicism when things don’t go your way. Cynicism is the kiss of death in sales.

Remember this: Killing objectivity in your business is not murder, its suicide!

Know your numbers and the ones you can impact: How many leads do you need? How many conversations do you need to blow past your goals? What is your closing %? Etc.

Take note of the numbers that you CAN impact not the ones that you can’t. If you can’t control the number of leads that marketing provides, measure how many referrals you collect. You can’t control the leads that answer the phone, but measure the number that do and how you convert. Find your Pony in the numbers!

Twitter-ize your sales process

I’ve had a love affair with Twitter as of late. Twitter has challenged me to write short valuable messages. Twitter allows only 140 characters. Trust me; it’s a challenge to get your point across in 140 characters.

I’m sure there are areas in your sales process that are unnecessarily long, drawn out, time intensive. Find ways to cut it down and become more efficient in your sales activities. Don’t take 1 hour to do a 30-minute task. Compress the time it takes to hit your goals. You may just find that you blow past them…

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